"It would have been an earthquake about 10 times smaller than the one we felt today," he said, comparing it to two earthquakes that struck Reading in the same day in 1994.

He estimated the energy felt by local residents would have measured to a magnitude of 3 or 4 -- meaning Virginians near the epicenter would have felt vibrations 100 to 1,000 times more powerful.

The long reach of the earthquake was possible because of the particularly hard rock that makes up the geology of the East Coast, said Brian Exton, an assistant professor in geology at Cedar Crest College. While pretty impressive in these parts, Exton said a 5.9-magnitude quake would not have made the same kind of waves in California, where the sediment is not as solid.

“For most of us on
the East Coast, these are unusual events. One of this particular scale
is something that hundreds of thousands of people will have felt,” Exton said.

“There are literally a hundred earthquakes occurring across the earth everyday,” Exton said.

The tectonic fault lines along the East Coast are ancient — created some 300 to 500 million years ago — and ill-mapped, Exton said. He likened the intermittent seismic activity to that of an old, settling house.

“No one really understands the mechanism that starts it,” Exton said.

Strong aftershocks don’t appear too likely, according to the professor. There were reports of follow-up tremors Tuesday afternoon, but his sister who lives in Richmond said she didn’t feel a thing.

“There’s no need of widespread panic,” Exton said.

Though rare, earthquakes have been known to strike some areas of the East Coast said Pazzaglia. Tuesday's quake struck an area not far from where similarly sized earthquakes hit.

Earthquake evacuation in EastonThe Alpha Building in Easton was evacuated today after an earthquake in southern Virginia was felt in the Lehigh Valley. Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr. said a structural engineer would check out city hall.

Tuesday’s event did, however, provide teachers up and down the coast a great teachable moment.

Ben Coleman, assistant professor of computer science at Moravian College, said the college's seismometers got a jolt from the quake. Coleman, who develops software to help students learn seismology, said the college was able to collect data from the quake that will be useful in the classroom.

Exton said the quake will also serve as a teaching tool in his field. He said geology gets a bad rap for being one of the more boring scientific fields, but that’s nothing a little earthquake tremor can’t fix.

“That will be the first thing I ask my students next week: where were you during the earthquake? That will be a jumping off point for how the earth works and how you experience geology,” Exton said. “We live on a very dynamic planet. Things like this happen everyday.”